Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that for nearly a decade the coalition failed to make our country more resilient to the impact of natural disasters, mainly because they didn't believe in climate change. Not only did they not spend a single dollar of their Emergency Response Fund, which was designed specifically to invest in disaster resilience; they also failed to guarantee the ongoing funding of our national natural disaster agencies beyond 1 July this year. This is another one of these temporary measures that Senator Gallagher is having to work her way through in the budget, with funding that was due to run out on 30 June this year. That included the natural disaster management agencies of the federal government. If the coalition had won the election our national natural disaster agencies would have run out of money on 30 June this year and, as things currently stand, the new National Emergency Management Agency requires an injection of new funding simply to continue operating. These are the kinds of economic vandals these people are. (Time expired)